Mehdi Zerroug of Framimex reported that, in France, a law designed to develop the sorting of used clothing was expected to come into force in January 2008. “Many French companies are relying on this law in order to be able to continue their operations,” delegates were told.
Hans Brak of Vereniging Herwinning Textiel in the Netherlands offered his support for the system rolling out in France whereby manufacturers and importers of clothing are asked to pay into a fund to aid recycling. The speaker also introduced the notion of a recycling related brand mark for clothing to enable the buying public to make an informed choice.
Continuing the earlier theme of definitions, there was also discussion of an “interpretative communication” from the EU Commission offering definitions of the terms "product", "production residue" and "byproduct".
According to Mr Gläser, this offered support for moves to extricate certain textile recycling industry products from waste legislation. However, BIR Environmental & Technical Director Ross Bartley emphasised that this “communication” was an interpretation of existing EU law and that use in the manner proposed “may weaken the intention of getting a solution through the main waste framework directive”.
Guest speaker Hildegard Hülsenbeck of LobbeTzilalis in Greece explained that the recycling of textiles represented “virgin territory” in her home country, although the national government had undertaken to develop recycling plans for materials not covered by existing recovery programmes.
In Athens, the new President and Vice President of the BIR Textiles Division were named as, respectively, Olaf Rintsch of Textil Recycling K&A Wenkhaus in Germany and Mehdi Zerroug of Framimex, France.
Bureau of International Recycling
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